Essentially, Romney had been beaten to a draw by Rick Santorum, a hard-line Christian conservative long viewed as a no-hoper in the White House stakes.

A brash former senator for Pennsylvania, Santorum once condemned a Supreme Court decision to throw out a Texas law against sodomy. Defending the moral hard line, he said: ‘If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery.’

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Such views led to Santorum being denounced by his own nephew, who said the presidential hopeful was determined to ‘dictate to individuals how they must live’.

The Iowa caucuses were essentially community meetings in which Republicans gathered to discuss the candidates and then cast their vote. Just behind the joint winners Romney and Santorum was Congressman Ron Paul, who at 77 would be the oldest man ever to be elected United States president if he somehow triumphed in November’s national poll.

Until recently, Paul, whose cult-ish followers revere his stance on small government and strict adherence to the constitution, had been viewed by many as a slightly nutty but harmless figure.

Perception: Until recently, 77 year old Ron Paul had been seen as a slightly nutty but harmless figure

When he rose in the polls, however, he came under attack for suggesting the CIA might have been responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks and for racist newsletters he published 20 years ago.

One of these said it was safe to assume that 95 per cent of the black males in Washington DC ‘are semi-criminal or entirely criminal’. Another branded civil rights hero Martin Luther King a ‘world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours’ and ‘seduced under-age girls and boys’.

Suddenly, Ron Paul was not a kindly grandfather but the racist uncle who always embarrassed you at Christmas lunch.

On one level, Romney’s narrow win over one sanctimonious, intolerant rival determined to search for gays in the closet and another who came across as a crazy racist would seem a pretty hollow victory.

In any case, the Republican nomination is decided by who wins the support of most of the 2,200 delegates from all 50 states at the party convention in August. In Iowa, there were just seven a-piece awarded to Romney, Santorum and Paul. Add in the fact that Romney actually secured fewer votes in Iowa than he did when he finished second here in 2008 (when he eventually lost the Republican nomination to John McCain) and there is a case to be made that the victory was Pyrrhic.

There would also be something in the argument that Iowa is irrelevant and unrepresentative — a vote by just 20 per cent of an overwhelmingly white and Christian evangelical Republican electorate in a bland expanse of Middle America.

Extreme: Rick Santorum once condemned a Supreme Court decision to throw out a Texas law against sodomy

Much of this, however, is to miss the point. The Republican primary contest is a test of endurance, organisation, fund-raising power and the ability to campaign virtually 24/7 for more than a year.

Iowa’s importance is less in who it anoints than in the fact it presents the candidates with their first real test, and there are immediate fallers.

Next Tuesday brings the primary in New Hampshire (where polls have Romney, ex-governor of neighbouring Massachusetts, nearly 30 points ahead) quickly followed by South Carolina and Florida.

Once this small but diverse collection of four states has voted, the Republican candidate will probably have been chosen — though don’t forget that Obama’s epic struggle with Hillary Clinton for the Democrat nomination in 2008 went all the way to five months before the national vote.

Iowa sent a tearful Rick Perry back to his Texas Governor’s mansion for ‘a little prayer and reflection’ so he could decide ‘whether there is a path forward for myself in this race’. Which could well mean he’s dropping out.

Similarly, Michele Bachmann — the Minnesota congresswoman once described as a ‘mini Sarah Palin’ — announced she had ‘decided to stand aside’.

Victim of the fight: Michele Bachmann has announced that she will end her campaign for president

Newt Gingrich, the monumentally self-satisfied, thrice-married, 68-year-old former antagonist of President Bill Clinton, will stay in the race. But it’s worth considering what Iowa did to him. A month ago, Gingrich led by 11 points in the state, six points nationally and was airily declaring that the Republican nomination was his.

Yet he finished fourth in Iowa, and used his concession speech to whine about the negative advertisements run against him.

Then, having vowed to run an entirely positive campaign, he hypocritically placed a full-page newspaper ad in New Hampshire, branding Romney a ‘timid Massachusetts moderate’. With Perry almost out and Gingrich flailing around like an angry drunk in the dark, Romney’s path to the Republican nomination is much clearer.

Having surged from the back of the pack to the front in a matter of weeks, Santorum is for the time being Romney’s main challenger, with a chance of rallying Christian conservatives behind him, as well as those who view Romney’s Mormon religion as a sinister cult.

The romantic image of a plucky Santorum — who travelled around Iowa in a Dodge truck driven by a friend called Chuck and had no chartered jet or security detail like Romney — winning the White House the old-fashioned way is likely to be a pipe dream.

He spent more than 100 days in Iowa, visiting all 99 counties and holding 381 ‘town hall’ meetings with voters. Such an effort is impossible nationally. And he escaped the onslaught of negative attacks and harsh scrutiny directed at Romney’s previous rivals because until now no one considered him a threat.

Moreover, Santorum has plenty of weaknesses and has some tricky relationships with colleagues. For instance, he’s despised by Senator John McCain, who yesterday endorsed Romney. A devout Catholic, Santorum is a father of seven who speaks about faith and family as the cornerstone of government.

His wife Karen has written about their son Michael Gabriel, who was born in 1996 and lived for only two hours. The couple slept with the lifeless baby overnight in hospital before taking him home so his siblings could hold him before he was buried.

On the campaign trail, Santorum often talks about his daughter Isabella, three, who suffers from a usually fatal genetic disorder.

With regard to foreign affairs, he is an enthusiastic proponent of bombing ‘Islamic fascist’ Iran and has warned voters about Obama turning the U.S. into Britain, whose welfare system and NHS had cost it ‘world domination’.

Santorum said: ‘The sun didn’t set on the British Empire. They lost heart and faith in themselves and in their mission, who they were and what values they wanted to spread around the world.’

However, Romney will never be the most exciting candidate. As a strict Mormon — he has served as a bishop in his church — he eschews even coffee, never mind alcohol. He can’t be that fabled guy that voters would like to have a beer with because he’s never even sat at a bar.

His hair is too perfect (though it’s tousled a bit more these days), as a multi-millionaire former venture capitalist he is the epitome of Corporate Man (hence his decision to dress down on the campaign trail with jeans and open-neck shirts).

His five sons and beautiful (half-Welsh) wife look like a Tommy Hilfiger ad when they gather on stage. Whether he can feel the nation’s pain over the economy, though, remains to be seen.

A former self-described ‘progressive’ who once believed in abortion rights, Romney is distrusted by conservatives who see him as a ‘flip-flopper’. He has yet to convince most Americans that he has any deeply-held core beliefs.

‘It’s long, it’s brutal. No one ends up winning the Super Bowl who doesn’t have a really dirty
uniform. You’re going to have losses.'

- Romney aide Stuart Stevens' take on the presidential race

But he is only just beginning to make his case to the country. To a large extent, the Republican primary race so far has been a parade of carnival grotesques.

First there was a flirtation with running from tycoon Donald Trump, possibly the most preposterous man in America. Then came Bachmann, who confused actor John Wayne with serial killer John Wayne Gacy and ended by declaring she was ‘America’s Iron Lady’, the new Margaret Thatcher.

Next up was Perry, whose ‘Oops’ moment when he could not remember the three government departments he had vowed to abolish will go down as the most excruciating 56 seconds in presidential debate history.

After that was Herman Cain, the pizza mogul who did not know that China had nuclear weapons and could not remember which country Libya was. He had to drop out of the race after an array of women came forward to state that he had harassed, assaulted or bedded them. Newt Gingrich then imploded and, finally, Ron Paul sank into third place.

Yet to a large degree, the Republican contest is dispensing with the lunatic fringe of candidates and proceeding towards selecting the man most likely to appeal to centrist voters.

Romney aide Stuart Stevens (a rumpled Mississippian who studied at Oxford and counts George Clooney as a friend) is fond of comparing a presidential race to American football.

‘It’s long, it’s brutal,’ he told me. ‘No one ends up winning the Super Bowl who doesn’t have a really dirty uniform. You’re going to have losses.’

Two horse race: The Republican contest seems to be striding towards selecting the man most likely to appeal to centre voters

Republicans have reason to be concerned about Romney’s vulnerabilities — and about the lack of enthusiasm for any of the party’s candidates. But feeling a little foolish after swooning over Obama last time and electing him with such a huge majority, Americans will be happy with a more prosaic, even awkward, figure this time around.

Mitt Romney might be a little difficult to love, but he is also very hard to hate.

Although there has been a slight improvement in the state of the economy, Americans are angry about healthcare reform, unemployment, profligate stimulus spending and a national debt topping $15 trillion.

Obama remains an inspirational figure to many. But it would be folly to dismiss the prospects of Romney or the Republicans.

Iowa was the first game of the season. There’s a way to go before November’s Super Bowl.